Some of the Lethal Weapon movies have aged badly. In the 3rd one, for example, Riggs and Murtaugh get busted down to patrol duty, and then first thing you see them doing is accosting a Jaywalker by yelling at them, threatening to write them a ticket and pointing a gun at them. It's played for laughs, but it only comes across in poor taste now.
Martin Riggs, as a character, was pretty much obsolete from the word go. Now, Sledge Hammer, OTOH...that's another story. Sledge is eternal! (yeah, yeah, I know what Peter Gabriel SAID the song was about, but I suspect... )
Iron Eagle was fun to watch as a kid, but looking back at it, it makes no sense. The entire plot depends on 1) being able to steal a fighter jet from the Air Force, and 2) Doug not getting shot 50,000 times the second he landed the jet at an enemy airbase and got out.
Well, Riggs has some good old-fashioned fun ridiculing Asian accents in the next movie with his "flied lice" shit, so I mean yeah
Yeah, A Christmas Story does it too. At the Chinese restaurant. The fah rah rah rah rah bit. Was it pointed out before that Vader did not know Leia was Force sensitive but he could tell Luke was while flying a fighter. Also, Luke was able to hit the exhaust vent using the Force, but Vader relied on the computer to shoot.
Harley Fat-boys were never sold with the ability to turn the headlight off, as far as I know (it was illegal for domestic bikes from 79 on) , and it was a fairly new model in 1991, just out for a year. In-world explanation it was either some stupid biker-stuff done to it, or the headlamp was just broken. I know why they did it for the movie, just "he can see in the dark" etc, but yeah, it was a strange decision.... I'm a fan of the model, I own a '14
Yeah, I noticed that and cringed. Plus, it doesn't help that the 4th movie isn't great compared to the others.
It became a gag parody really. Even bringing in comedian Chris Rock to ramble on like Pesci had been doing already, but while it was somewhat charming in the 2nd movie, it wore thin in the 3rd, & just got plain saturated with it in the 4th. It almost became unrecognizable from the gritty 1st film imho. That movie was the original successful 80s recipe. Smart mouthed action heroes, like John McClane, but set in an edgy story. Those IPs devolve pretty easily into gag reels & hacky one-liners though, sadly. You're not wrong, actually. Until recently, I'd forgotten that in the 1st film, Riggs, while at the infamous gun range scene, expressed disgust at the thought of Hunsacker's daughter having a gay sexual encounter that they hadn't considered, to break the case.
Agreed. I think Pesci's character was at his best in the second movie. Then he simply got annoying, and is it me or did his voice get higher in the 3rd? And honestly, I'm not a big fan of Chris Rock, and his addition was jarring to say the least. It felt like he brought his Rush Hour schtick to this series and it felt kind of out of place. Although the funny thing is, both Lethal Weapon 4 and Rush Hour came out in 1998.
^ Chris Rock is in Lethal Weapon 4. Chris Tucker is in Rush Hour, though the notion that it's really the same performance is not lost on me lol
Doh, that was bad of me. And I even looked it up. They both have annoying voices, IMHO. It's like both of them ended up with very similar roles in two different movie franchises. It was the 4th one. It was the one with the Chinese triads. The story was far weaker than the other 3, and it relies on more tropes themselves. Once you take that away, there isn't really much left to it. Speaking of, with talks of a new movie in production, I wonder how they're going to handle the characters in this day and age. By the 4th movie, the series already lost some of the charm, and the characters are going to have to change with the times.
I've been saying it for a while now, but if they really do want to come back after all this time, I'll settle for nothing less than a return to the dark tone of the 1st. Riggs gets him & a rather elderly Murtaugh wrapped up in something dangerous that gets Roger killed, once & for all, because he is unquestionably way too old for this shit. Then Riggs goes on a high octane vendetta against those responsible, outside the law of course (Have you seen how jacked Gibson gets lately?) Ending with him being hunted down himself, after he's lethally weaponed them all, only to realize he's out of hope now. When going thru Roger's locker remnants that were given to him earlier, he finds the same hollow tipped bullet he gift wrapped for Roger at the end of the 1st, & now that there's no more reason not to... He finally uses it.
I wouldn't be surprised if that's the direction it ends up going in, given that Gibson is attached to be directing it himself.
He also likes darker toned stuff lately too. That direction is the only way to reconcile the characters, imho. Riggs is not a hero in modern society. Loose canon cops may have been all the literal rage back in Dirty Harry's & Popeye Doyle's day, but not now. The only way to reconcile it is to have him go out unheroic.
Yeah, that and the fact that they're closer to retiring age and can't exactly pull off the stuff they did in their younger years. It's kind of funny that as recently as their second movie, or maybe even earlier since I haven't seen the 1st one in ages, Murtaugh already complains about being too old and starts thinking about retirement.
In the 1st one, in 1987, Murtaugh is celebrating his 50th birthday & already lamenting that he's too old for this shit. By any reasonable figuring, Roger can't be anything less than 80 years old by now, even though Danny Glover is only 76, & was 41 in the original movie. Gibson is 10 years younger than Glover, & more realistically his natural age in the original movie.
Chris Tucker has a MUCH more annoying role than the one he had in Rush Hour. And I think we all know which one it was. "SUPERGREEN!"
If they're going to go with the flow now----as the last three went with their older formula-----then we can expect the villains to reveal justified causes, similar to Cumberbatch's Khan, Barden's Silva and recent Batman antagonists. Whoever the villain may be, she should be more memorable than the cipher from LH3.